Justice, Not Vengeance
Parashat Shoftim, Deuteronomy 16:18 - 21:9
Matthew Absolon, Beth Tfilah, Hollywood, FL
Justice, and only justice, you shall follow, that you may live and inherit the land that the Lord your God is giving you. (Deut 16:20)
The man who acts presumptuously by not obeying the priest who stands to minister there before the Lord your God, or the judge, that man shall die. So you shall purge the evil from Israel. ( Deut 17:12)
On October 27, 2018, Robert Bowers entered the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh shouting “All Jews must die!” He then proceeded to open fire. After the chaos had settled, eleven people had been murdered and six more critically wounded. It is the most violent antisemitic attack ever perpetrated on American soil.
Nearly five long years later on August 3, 2023, Bowers was formally sentenced to death.
Why did it take so long to exact justice? When we have the videos, the confessions, the 911 calls, the many, many eye-witnesses; why should vengeance be delayed for such an agonizingly long time? Why should the victims and the surviving families suffer so long to be denied their vengeance?
The answer is that we in America do not believe in vengeance, we believe in justice; and this belief finds its roots in the biblical world view of justice.
Rabbi Uri Regev in his paper, “Justice and Power: a Jewish Perspective” (https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/european-judaism/40/1/ej400113.xml) suggests that the Jewish fixation on justice starts at the very beginning of the Jewish story with our father Abraham. God commends Abraham in this way:
For I have chosen him, that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice, so that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has promised him. (Gen 18:19)
Here the words “righteousness and justice” – tzedakah u’mishpat – stand as the cornerstone of Jewish law and indeed are the vehicle through which the Lord will “bring to Abraham what he has promised him.” Stated another way, Abraham will receive God’s promises “by doing righteousness and justice.”
Justice, however, can be a pesky thing. It is not convenient, and it stands as a barrier to our fits of anger, rage, and vengeance. Justice is often described as having “slow turning wheels” or, in the words of Martin Luther King Jr., “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
Vengeance, however, requires no self-control; no moral discipline; no pause for thought. Vengeance amplifies its thirst for blood, when working in the collective of the mob. As we look down the annals of history, and reflect upon the social upheavals of the modern day, we see the great dangers of mob rule. Beckoning to the primitive and devilish ways that lurk in the deep recesses of each of our hearts, mob justice froths at the mouth in a sort of bestial trance, that defies reason, discipline, and self-control.
Our Lord was well accustomed to the mob. The mob tried to toss him off the cliff. He saved the woman caught in adultery from the mob. He was traded for the terrorist Barabbas by the approval of the mob.
Justice, in contrast, is a discipline. And moreover it cannot be explained outside a transcendent worldview. Without God, there is no framework to define justice. In fact, physical justice only has power when aligned with the spiritual view that man is made in the image of God (Gen 1:27; 9:6). As such man is endowed with free moral agency, and simultaneously endowed with infinite individual worth.
And so we see that justice at its core is not a system, or a person, or a socio-cultural phenomenon; justice is an outward expression of faith. It is an unwavering belief that man is created in the image of the Almighty God. As such we all contain the divine spark with its infinite and intrinsic value.
The neurotic hand of vengeance pays no attention to God’s claim upon every living soul and, when brandished in haste, vengeance leads to vengeance, and blood to more blood. Vengeance, like Justice, is a choice. It is a decision that we enter into for our own hurt.
Justice is a fruit that is cultivated in the individual heart as a moral decision that we must make, as an expression of God’s character and in humble submission to his divine claim as creator of mankind.
We Jews, along with our faithful friends, all breathed a mournful sigh of relief as we heard the verdict upon Robert Bowers that August night. But more than that, we decided to reject vengeance. Although we were killed, we burned with righteous anger, our hearts were broken with hurt; we did not give way to vengeance. We did not riot in the streets; we did not loot our neighbors; we did not burn down the city square.
No. Instead, with discipline and dignity, we upheld our spiritual duty by “doing righteousness and justice” that the promises of God may be visited upon the Children of Abraham.
In parallel to this, we submitted to God’s divine claim as creator by affording Robert Bowers the dignity of divine worth, through the exercise of justice, in contrast to the neurotic hand of vengeance. A dignity that he did not afford to us.
Justice is an act of spiritual discipline. It stands as the calming and stable hand of God, against the neurotic hand of vengeance. Justice is not found in the chants of the mob, or the passions of the grieving, or the swift bullet of the lawman; justice is found in the individual heart of every person who recognizes God’s sovereignty over his creation.
“Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Amen.
Scripture references are from the English Standard Version (ESV).